COVID cases on the brink of breaking 100k a day (Zoe Covid Study)

So has mine Lincslass. Some council workers were working from home, but I had to contact them twice for various reasons. The phone was picked up immediately and required actions were taken.

Americanpie Vaccines don't stop transmission, so there's even more reason for people to continue being cautious. Masks, social distancing when possible and testing aren't that difficult or infringing to do.

Americanpie

I think, IMHO, that people should stop getting tested so often. Our local council are offering prizes to people getting tested with no symptoms. It's as if the council want the pandemic to continue forever so that it can be used as an excuse for why nothing is being done. Nearly all council workers are still at home and the libraries still haven't fully opened to pre-pandemic hours. The vaccines do not stop anyone from passing the virus on so we have to learn to live with it.

Which council is that. Our local council has worked consistently throughout this pandemic. My daughter has been in the Office all through this. Changes have been made to assist the public, online, and telephone. We have never missed a bin collections in my area, and Libraries are now open. It’s a public service so has to be made available .

Dr Johns latest blog agrees with the ZoeApp stats and the ONS one. He can’t understand why the government one seems to underplay the amount of infection in the country. Hmm. Maybe they don’t want to hit the magic figure of 100,000 and have to bring in Plan B before COP26. Surely not.

Well, it really doesn’t matter if people were going to die anyway, does it….

^They have Covid but they are not dying of Covid.
They are mainly dying of an underlying condition that they have, up to the Covid, survived. (Unless you think there is absolutely no cause for their death)^

Unless of course their longstanding underlying condition has worsened anyway. It happens. With or without Covid as a factor, sadly.

Cunco

Growstuff: I am not denying anything. I am looking at the statistics on a daily and weekly basis. The death data is provided by ONS every Tuesday if you want to check my arithmetic.

You may be interested in this quote I saw today: ‘The majority of those that die do so with Covid and not of Covid.’

– Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist

You are not thinking logically Cunco.

So, people are dying.
They have Covid but they are not dying of Covid.
They are mainly dying of an underlying condition that they have, up to the Covid, survived. (Unless you think there is absolutely no cause for their death).

Don't you see that means Covid makes the difference and that we, therefore, need to deal with - not ignore -Covid.

And this is a verdict on Tegnell's strategy a year later:

www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-strategy-failed-higher-death-rate-2021-8?r=US&IR=T

You might be interested in reading how Tegnell changed his mind:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52903717

Cunco

Growstuff: I am not denying anything. I am looking at the statistics on a daily and weekly basis. The death data is provided by ONS every Tuesday if you want to check my arithmetic.

You may be interested in this quote I saw today: ‘The majority of those that die do so with Covid and not of Covid.’

– Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist

That's rubbish!

Americanpie

I think, IMHO, that people should stop getting tested so often. Our local council are offering prizes to people getting tested with no symptoms. It's as if the council want the pandemic to continue forever so that it can be used as an excuse for why nothing is being done. Nearly all council workers are still at home and the libraries still haven't fully opened to pre-pandemic hours. The vaccines do not stop anyone from passing the virus on so we have to learn to live with it.

The pandemic won't stop if people stop testing. It won't just go away if people aren't looking.

This article gives a very good explanation of the problems in collecting and analysing data about deaths in a pandemic:

www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

Here's the first paragraph, the article has lots of useful graphs:

"As covid-19 has spread around the world, people have become grimly familiar with the death tolls that their governments publish each day. Unfortunately, the total number of fatalities caused by the pandemic may be even higher, for several reasons. First, the official statistics in many countries exclude victims who did not test positive for coronavirus before dying—which can be a substantial majority in places with little capacity for testing. Second, hospitals and civil registries may not process death certificates for several days, or even weeks, which creates lags in the data. And third, the pandemic has made it harder for doctors to treat other conditions and discouraged people from going to hospital, which may have indirectly caused an increase in fatalities from diseases other than covid-19.

One way to account for these methodological problems is to use a simpler measure, known as “excess deaths”: take the number of people who die from any cause in a given region and period, and then compare it with a historical baseline from recent years. We have used statistical models to create our baselines, by predicting the number of deaths each region would normally have recorded in 2020 and 2021."

Growstuff: I am not denying anything. I am looking at the statistics on a daily and weekly basis. The death data is provided by ONS every Tuesday if you want to check my arithmetic.

You may be interested in this quote I saw today: ‘The majority of those that die do so with Covid and not of Covid.’

– Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist

Americanpie

I think, IMHO, that people should stop getting tested so often. Our local council are offering prizes to people getting tested with no symptoms. It's as if the council want the pandemic to continue forever so that it can be used as an excuse for why nothing is being done. Nearly all council workers are still at home and the libraries still haven't fully opened to pre-pandemic hours. The vaccines do not stop anyone from passing the virus on so we have to learn to live with it.

One of the main problems during this pandemic is the lack of understanding about people being asymptomatic. The PM didn’t know about people being asymptomatic till months after a lot of us knew about it (albeit no surprise there though). If my daughter hadn’t been testing her son on regular basis she would have sent him to school with covid a day or so before he started to show any symptoms. Both the Alpha variant and the Delta variant took off in this country at a time when infection rates were soaring but nothing was done about it. You could argue that it was discovered here because our genomic sequencing is so good but the counter argument is that, if it is so good we should be able to stay one step ahead of the virus. But, for that to happen we need to be proactive, not reactive. And this doesn’t seem to happen.

Americanpie

I think, IMHO, that people should stop getting tested so often. Our local council are offering prizes to people getting tested with no symptoms. It's as if the council want the pandemic to continue forever so that it can be used as an excuse for why nothing is being done. Nearly all council workers are still at home and the libraries still haven't fully opened to pre-pandemic hours. The vaccines do not stop anyone from passing the virus on so we have to learn to live with it.

I think the problem is understanding what "living with the virus" actually means.

But what do you mean by "learn to live with it". When I read that it comes over as is you are saying we must learn to live as if it's not there, i.e., learn to die with it.

If we are going to learn to live with it being there and still making people very ill and killing some, then surely "learning to live with it" means changing our behaviour from what it used to be to a more protective way of living?

However, suggest masks and we get Jacob Rees Mogg and his inconsiderate, thoughtless and selfish comments. We also get similar ones on here.

If we suggest people need to maintain a reasonable space you can see many people have not learned that this is what they need to do in order to "live" with it.

If we suggest the government should not wait until the worst has happened we are really whistling in the dark. This government does not care about people, only their personal opportunity for wealth. Again, the same could be said about how some post on here.

Don't you really mean we need to learn to be ill/die with it?

Many schools in our area had multiple cases in the lead up to half term too with numbers of children positive growing noticeably day by day.

Half term may put a slight slow on actual numbers but I think until herd immunity is acheived in younger children it won't be enough yet.

Imposing mask wearing in shops, crowded indoor settings and on public transport does no harm to the economy. It is a sensible precaution. Win win.

A lot of schools are on half term now, a lot of secondary school were asking students to do lft tests twice a week and even a lot of primary schools were asking children to do lft tests...

So numbers are bound to fall during half term. I think we need to wait a couple more weeks for a more accurate picture

I think, IMHO, that people should stop getting tested so often. Our local council are offering prizes to people getting tested with no symptoms. It's as if the council want the pandemic to continue forever so that it can be used as an excuse for why nothing is being done. Nearly all council workers are still at home and the libraries still haven't fully opened to pre-pandemic hours. The vaccines do not stop anyone from passing the virus on so we have to learn to live with it.

Yes, we have a self isolation financial support scheme growstuff, it pays up to £750 to compensate for loss of earnings.

Is there going to be any extra financial and social support for those required to self-isolate? Without it, people with very mild symptoms won't bother testing.

Our Covid rules are to be stepped up in Wales following the press conference from the First Minister today. We will need Covid passes for cinema etc. if it is passed in Senedd next week, and self isolation rules are being tightened up if someone else in the household has covid. Quite worrying.

If you look at the age breakdown of cases, it's because cases in school age children have plummeted over half-term.

GrannyGravy13

Todays figures approximately 6,000 less than last Friday.

But deaths and hospitalisations have increased. Haven't people been saying they're what matter?

The well-worn "economic and well-being" argument is wearing a bit thin too.

Cunco

Yesterday, the reported figure for new cases in the UK was under 40,000 and the most recent trend is downwards.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk

Deaths with COVID-19 in England over recent weeks have been broadly stable under 800 and under half of one percent of new cases 4 weeks previously. This is a very low percentage. Note also that many of the people who died with COVID-19 did not die of COVID-19.

We can and should do all we can to protect ourselves but we should not exaggerate the risks. It is important for our economic and mental well-being that we lead as normal lives as we can.

It is absolute rot to claim that many of the people who died with COVID didn't die of COVID, but it's been the mainstay of COVID denialists for so long, some people have come to believe it.